Cybersecurity courses offered in Utica schools

Utica Community Schools students will now have access to cybersecurity courses to help develop skills in a fast-growing field.

The course, offered through the district’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) Department, will allow high school students to explore and earn certification in a field where demand for frontline specialists in southeast Michigan has grown by more than 400 percent since 2010.

“UCS provides students a competitive advantage for the high-paying jobs of the future,” Superintendent Christine Johns said. “Through partnerships with industry leaders, UCS teachers are working to ensure students have access to the careers and fields that will help drive this region’s economy.”

- Advertisement -

The course was approved by the UCS Board of Education in March and offered to students during spring registration. The year-long course will begin this fall.

Through the offering, UCS students will study how businesses are addressing the critical issue of cybersecurity, which a 2018 IBM study estimated costs businesses an average of $3.86 million for each data breach (Cost of Data Breach Study, ibm.com/security/data-breach).

The specific course goals stress:

* What cybersecurity means to individuals personally and professionally.How to be safe online by understanding common threats, attacks and vulnerabilities.

* How to be safe online by understanding common threats, attacks and vulnerabilities.

* Strategies businesses are using to protect their operations from cyber-attacks and the growth of the cybersecurity industry.

*Connecting students with the global Cisco Networking Academy, a community of educators and students in 180 countries that supports digital education in areas that are in the greatest demand by employers.

Students completing the course will have the ability to earn CompTIA A+ certification, a globally recognized industry standard.

Specialists in cybersecurity continue to be in high demand.

The Cybersecurity Skills Gap Analysis, issued by the Workforce Intelligence Network for Southeast Michigan, reported in July 2017 that specialists are earning more than double the national median hourly wage and that employer demand in southeast Michigan for frontline security workers has increased by 414 percent between 2010 and 2016. (Cybersecurity Skills Gap Analysis, winintelligence.org/report/cybersecurity-report/.

The report describes “Frontline Security Workers” as those individuals who work directly with technical design and implementation of cybersecurity strategies.